ACROSS
1 San Francisco
section
6 Hailing place?
10 One growing up
fast?
14 Laura Petrie
catchphrase
15 Will’s role in
“Celebrity
Jeopardy!”
sketches on
“SNL”
16 Cultural opening?
17 Slip ’N Slide
maker
18 Singer Halliwell
19 __ time
20 National
alternative
22 Playground
threat
24 Word with guilt or
debt
27 Symbol of
strength
28 Those, in Tijuana
29 Tennessee team,
briefly
31 Unveiling
35 It’s double-
hyphenated:
Abbr.
36 South Asian
garment
37 Helical pasta
38 Border area,
which contains a
hint to solving
this puzzle’s 12
border answers
41 Get back
42 Foot on a farm
43 Fleur-de-__
44 Search casually,
as for a bar
pickup
45 Marathon prep
run
46 Found (on)
47 Toon with an odd
laugh
49 Author Allende
51 Big wind
54 “Doggone it!”
55 General Bradley
56 Rao’s competitor
58 Richard __,
Pulitzer-winning
author of “Empire
Falls”
62 Ranch neckwear
63 Old players,
briefly
64 Root of the
Progressive Era
65 Hightail it
66 Site of
Cornwallis’
surrender
67 City on New
York’s Black River
DOWN
1 Cattle-raising
district
2 He lost to RMN
3 Nest egg letters
4 Migrants
5 Like stars
6 Witches
7 Miss modifier?
8 Good qualities
9 Kick out
10 The 18th edition
of his original
work was
published in 2012
11 Type of arch
12 __-B
13 Textile
production
settlement
21 Without success
23 Opened
24 Tourism hub
25 Bank, cardwise
26 Plea to remain
27 Move like
ophidians
30 “Catch-22” pilot
32 H.S. experiment
site
33 Reckless, say
34 Place to see
stars
36 Tricks of the
trade
37 Annual award
recipient
39 Pitcher?
40 Simba, to Sarabi
45 Company
founded in
Beaumont
46 Scott of “NCIS:
New Orleans”
48 “Neato!”
50 Common
fastener
51 Historic Omaha
suburb
52 Crazily
53 Munro pen name
54 Corn cover
57 Canine warning
59 Canine
command
60 Seagoing
pronoun
61 Drama set in
Grover’s Corners
By Alex S. Vratsanos
©2016 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
02/05/16
02/05/16
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
RELEASE DATE– Friday, February 5, 2016
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
xwordeditor@aol.com
Classifieds
Call: #734-418-4115
Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com
NEAR CAMPUS APARTMENTS
Avail Fall 16‑17
Eff/1 Bed ‑ $750 ‑ $1400
2 Bed ‑ $1050 ‑ $1425
3 Bed ‑ $1955
Most include Heat and Water
Parking where avail is $50/m
Many are Cat Friendly
CAPPO 734‑996‑1991
www.cappomanagement.com
4, 5 OR 6 BEDROOM HOUSES
1119 S. Forest ‑ May or September
1019 Packard ‑ September
$2800 ‑ $3500 based on number of ppl
Tenants pay all utilities.
Both have parking and laundry.
Showings M‑F 10‑3; 24 hour notice
required. www.deincoproperties.com
734‑996‑1991
2, 3 & 4 Bedroom Apts @ 1015 Packard
Avail for Fall 2016‑17
$1400 ‑ $2700 + gas and water; Tenants
pay
electric
to
DTE;
Limited
parking
avail
for $50/mo; On‑site Laundry
CALL DEINCO 734‑996‑1991
4 BEDROOM HOUSE
NORTH CAMPUS/HOSPITAL
1010 CEDAR BEND ‑ $2400 + utilities
PARKING & LAUNDRY
734‑996‑1991
1, 2 & 3 Bedroom Apts on Arch
Avail Fall 2016‑17
$1050 ‑ $2500 + electric contribution
CALL DEINCO 734‑996‑1991
ARBOR PROPERTIES
Award‑Winning Rentals in Kerrytown,
Central Campus, Old West Side,
Burns Park. Now Renting for 2016.
734‑649‑8637. www.arborprops.com
! NORTH CAMPUS 1‑2 Bdrm. !
! Riverfront/Heat/Water/Parking. !
! www.HRPAA.com !
DOMINICK’S HIRING FOR spring
& summer. Call 734‑834‑5021.
THESIS EDITING, LANGUAGE,
organization, format. All Disciplines.
734/996‑0566 or writeon@iserv.net
1 & 2 Bedroom Apts on Wilmot
Avail Fall 2016‑17
$975 ‑ $1575 Plus Electric to DTE
Coin Laundry Access, Free WiFi
Parking Avail $50‑$80/m
CALL DEINCO 734‑996‑1991
6 BEDROOM FALL 2016‑17
Central Campus House
335 Packard ‑ $3800 + Utilities
Parking, Laundry, Lots of Common area
www.deincoproperties.com
734‑996‑1991
2016‑17 LEASING
Apartments Going Fast!
Prime Student Housing
761‑8000
www.primesh.com
Efficiencies:
344 S. Division $835/$855
610 S. Forest $870
1 Bedrooms:
508 Division $925/$945
2 Bedroom:
1021 Vaughn (1 left) $1410
*Fully Furnished
*Parking Included
*Free Ethernet
(* Varies by locations)
WORK ON MACKINAC Island
This Summer – Make lifelong friends.
The Island House Hotel and Ryba’s
Fudge Shops are looking for help in all
areas beginning in early May: Front Desk,
Bell Staff, Wait Staff, Sales Clerks,
Kitchen, Baristas. Housing, bonus, and
discounted meals. (906) 847‑7196.
www.theislandhouse.com
SERVICES
FOR RENT
SUMMER EMPLOYMENT
HELP WANTED
6 — Friday, February 5, 2016
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
By LEJLA BAJGORIC
Hip-Hop Columnist
“
Don’t do no press, but I get
the most press kid.”
The last Michigan Daily
hip-hop columnist, Adam
DePollo, wrote his first piece
on college hip hop with an
obligatory focus on Kanye and
the monumental moment that
was the ’04 release of Dropout.
Before him, columnist Jack-
son Howard recounted the hip
hop that set the scene for the
summer of 2013, making sure
to include Ye’s “Bound 2” on
his list of songs that lasted into
the fall. So I ask, as Killa Cam
might, who am I to fuck tradi-
tion up? Besides, Kanye just
makes it too damn easy.
I’ll safely assume that the
Daily’s readership is composed
of cultured college students
who make it a personal duty
of theirs to stay up to date on
the world’s current events, lat-
est political scandals and, of
course, Twitter beefs. (Read:
You saw the belligerence that
was Kanye’s Twitter account
last week, right? Or at least read
about it before he deleted those
embarrassing-ass messages
chock-full of self-absorption
and sexism? Cool, I figured.)
Just in case, though, here’s a
quick refresher to get us going:
Wiz wasn’t feeling Kanye’s
album’s name change (initially
Swish, now Waves). If you’ve
ever heard someone say “free
the wave,” you can be 99% sure
she was referring to Max B,
the Harlem rapper currently
serving a 75-year sentence, best
known for creating the Wave
sound. This is what upset Wiz:
Everyone in the (rap) world
knows the wavy movement is
associated with Max B, the
reason he’s lauded and loved, so
why is Ye biting Biggavelli?
This set the scene, but it was
a misinterpretation on Kanye’s
behalf that caused the conflict;
Wiz was tweeting about his
weed, known as KK, or Khalifa
Kush, but in Kanye’s mind, the
only thing KK could possibly
refer to is Kim Kardashian. So
he flipped, called Wiz out for
being corny, made observations
about Wiz’s “cool pants” and
asserted that he is Wiz’s “OG
and will be respected as such.”
But it didn’t take long for Ye to
bring up his ex, the mother to
Wiz’s child, socially conscious
SlutWalk-organizer and bald-
headed baddie — Amber Rose.
“You let a stripper trap for
you” is point four on a 17-point-
long tirade by Ye. It makes you
wonder if he really made that
misinterpretation or if he was
just looking for a reason to
talk about Amber. He does it
an awful lot, every time just as
uncalled for as the last.
I’m going to refer to this spat
between Wiz and Ye as a “rap
beef” just for the sake of the
argument. The use of women,
specifically Black women, and
even more specifically Black
women who occupy or occu-
pied the role of ex-girlfriend/
lover/etc., as pawns in a conflict
between two men is pretty
common in rap. It’s actually
something like a staple. Think:
What’s the most famous rap
diss of all time, and what do you
hear within the first two sec-
onds, the line that sets the pace
for the rest of the song, and
cements the track’s place in rap
diss history?
“That’s why I fucked your
bitch, you fat motherfucker.”
Pac was never subtle about
anything — not about his para-
noia surrounding death, not
about his views that the gov-
ernment and police were the
true gangs who ran the country
and, sure as hell, not about his
sexism. “Hit ‘Em Up” is the
most famous track birthed dur-
ing the infamous East Coast/
West Coast rap beef. The open-
ing line is an allusion to Big-
gie Smalls’s wife at the time,
Faith Evans. “You claim to be a
player, but I fucked your wife,”
spits Pac, and we’re not even
thirty seconds into this shit yet.
Though Pac makes multiple
threats aimed at each and every
member of Bad Boy, threat-
ens to cut up Cease until he’s
deceased (clever) and “snatch”
Lil Kim off the streets, the most
insulting line is the one heard
first; everything else seems
like an afterthought. Faith is
positioned as a pawn, reduced
to nothing more than a tool Pac
can use to discredit Biggie on
all accounts. Simply put: How
could anything Big say hold
weight when Pac “fucked (his)
bitch?” Though Pac claims to
have been amorously involved
with Faith, there’s nothing
romantic
about their
supposed rela-
tionship; he
simply used
her sexually
to compro-
mise Biggie’s
reputation.
As a means of
asserting his
power over
Big, Pac places
Faith, a sexual pawn, beneath
the both of them.
But we don’t have to go back
20 years to find comparisons.
There’s a prime case from
last summer that I know you
haven’t forgotten yet, no mat-
ter how much we all want to:
Drizzy vs. Meek, the feud that
we can safely say Drake won,
but damn, did he really say
much outside of all those lines
referencing Nicki Minaj? Nicki
and Drake, longtime friends
and Young Money family, have
always had a flirty relationship,
so it’s natural people would
assume the two were at some
point romantically involved;
after all, he took her to a con-
venience store and bought her
snacks that one time. That’s
real. But on The Pinkprint’s
“Only,” Nicki lets it be known,
loud and clear: “I never fucked
Wayne, I never fucked Drake
/ On my life man, fuck’s sake.”
Instead, she’s been cozied up
with MMG representer Meek
Mill for a minute now, and the
HIP-HOP COLUMN
Women aren’t pawns
in your beef
two are happily engaged. Know-
ing how longstanding Drake’s
friendship with Nicki is, you’d
assume he wouldn’t bring her
into the beef with Meek; their
friendship precedes Meek’s
claims of Drake’s history of
ghostwriting. Drake is bet-
ter than that, right? Not in the
slightest.
“And shout out to all my boss
bitches wifin’ n****s / Make
sure you hit him with the pre-
nup.”
“Back to Back” was per-
formed at OVO Fest before
thousands, a screen full of
memes accompanying Drake’s
performance and adding to the
embarrassment. Many of the
memes feminized Meek, illus-
trating him in dresses and Nicki
in suits; Meek’s in a relationship
with a woman who has built
an empire around her name,
which is to say she’s making
more money than him. Like, a
lot more. Like, her net worth is
more than 20 times Meek’s. But
the breadwin-
ner in the States
is tradition-
ally male, as
is the case in
any patriarchy;
thus, whoever is
financially sub-
ordinate occu-
pies the “wife”
role, regardless
of gender, as
is implied by
Drake. And in a capitalist soci-
ety, if you’re financially subor-
dinate, you’re actually worth
less — I’m speaking about your
humanity here. Keep this point
about class in mind. Nonethe-
less, the main point here is that
once again the easiest and most
hurtful way to diss a dude is
to bring his girl into the mix,
reduce her to a instrument and
if you can somehow incorporate
financial status, definitely do
so, since cash rules everything
around us.
“You let a stripper trap for
you.”
Sex-shaming isn’t cool,
never was, never will be, but
it’s fascinating that Kanye has
the audacity to shame Amber’s
history as a sex worker while
praising Kim as the Marilyn
Monroe of our generation. Both
figures — Kim and Marilyn —
are regarded as sex symbols,
Kim specifically entering main-
stream popular culture dis-
course through an appearance
in a sex tape. I mean, the tape
was leaked, but Kim still struts
her stuff every chance she gets.
And this isn’t said to shame
Kim. I’m all for bodily autonomy
(as I hope you are too). It’s sad
to point out the cognitive dis-
sonance it seems Ye is dealing
with, since he knows Kim’s suc-
cess is strongly associated with
her sexuality: “My girl a super-
star all from a home movie.”
But there’s a difference
between how certain acts
or occupations, all sexual in
nature, are understood based
on differences in race and
class. For example, burlesque
vs. stripping. The two differ
in compensation, in historical
elements and some performance
ones as well — burlesque being
viewed as a performance piece
that doesn’t necessarily involve
direct engagement with the
audience. But race and class
can’t be factored out of the
equation and are intimately
woven into the difference in
perception between high-
class, sophisticated burlesque
performers and “ratchet,”
for everybody strippers. It’s
important to incorporate race
and class dynamics when we
discuss sexism, and that’s really
the common thread here —
the domination of women, or
sexism.
How do we talk about sex-
ism in hip hop? There’s a few
options here, and most suck,
but hopefully the good one (I
saved it for last) can help us out
when the next rap beef ensues
and someone’s baby mother is
unnecessarily mentioned, gross-
ly demeaned and nonchalantly
objectified.
Option one: adopt an anti-hip
hop stance, because if hip hop
goes away, then sexism in hip
hop goes away too by default.
My vote here is no. For one
thing, by erasing all hip hop,
we’re erasing the good stuff
too — the politically charged,
radical and rebellious, uplift-
ing and liberating stuff. And
that’s uplifting and liberating
for women too. “So preserve
the Golden Age tapes and just
get rid of contemporary rap,”
you might be thinking. Still no.
“Fight the Power” was more
than a song; it was an anthem,
I agree. But present day art-
ists have proven to have the
same capacity to make pow-
erful music, music that calls
for reflections on excessive
consumption, for the sexual
liberation of women, for the dis-
mantling of white supremacy.
The real issue with this stance
is that it is often tinged with
conservative rhetoric, anti-
Black at its core, blaming rap’s
content for societal issues at
large and the decline in Ameri-
can society. Essentially, it uses
hip hop as a racially charged
scapegoat, and I hope I don’t
have to explain why that’s
wrong.
Option two: if the issue (sex-
ism) isn’t a product of hip hop,
then leave it be and address it at
its core instead. This is better,
but still no. Sexism predates hip
hop culture, but the issue with
sexism, as is the issue with any
systemic form of oppression that
permeates all facets — media,
government, you name it — of
society is that any fight against
it is “necessarily partial and
incomplete.” Tricia Rose elabo-
rates on this in “The Hip Hop
Wars” (I know I mentioned the
text in my last column too, this
is the last time I promise, I just
really want you to read it), but
the takeaway is we’d be doing
ourselves a disservice. Sexism is
everywhere, yes, but that means
it must be fought on all fronts,
including and especially hip hop
— the dominant music of our
time, a primary means through
which we’re socialized.
Option three: come to terms
with the fact that most sex-
ism in rap isn’t an articulation
of what rappers observe, but
instead is a reinforcement of
those observations, and hold
rappers, as you should hold
anyone, accountable. Winner,
winner. This attack on sexism
must not be of the religious
kind — encouraging women to
dress and act modestly, submis-
sively, as a means of avoiding
degradation. Basically “don’t
act like a hoe and you won’t be
called one” — inherently flawed,
oppressive logic. And the attack
also must not be anti-Black-
youth, pinning the plights of
our time on the most marginal-
ized peoples. Only a progressive
engagement that successfully
avoids the aforementioned traps
can do hip hop any good, and as
sexism is found virtually every-
where, a synchronized and sim-
ilarly structured engagement in
other arenas is the only thing
that can do us all some good.
Bajgoric’s hip-hop net worth
is twenty times more than
Meek Mill’s. To charge her up,
e-mail lejla@umich.edu.
STYLE NOTEBOOK
The hip hijab
By MARIAM SHEIKH
Daily Style Editor
This year Dolce & Gabbana
joined the ranks of innovative
fashion designers by creating a
line of designer couture hijabs
and abayas. Muslim girls and
women in hijabs, including those
in full abayas, are often the most
stylish ones of my friends, family
and peers so it’s great to see the
fashion industry finally catering
to these women, who undeniably
make up a significant portion of
their market from shoes, to bags,
all the way down to jewelry.
Other retailers, like H&M and
DKNY, have also been notable
in the past year for catering to
Muslim women in their use of
hijab-wearing models. In sum-
mer 2014, DKNY launched a
collection specifically catered
to
“Muslim-friendly”
cloth-
ing for the month of Ramadan.
For anyone, fashion choices and
style are a huge part in express-
ing self-identity. For women who
choose to proudly sport a hijab
or an abaya, it’s an intrinsic part
of their self-expression, so why
shouldn’t they be given as many
options as the rest of us are when
shopping at our favorite stores?
Debuting
intrinsically
pat-
terned hijabs, as well as detailed
lace and embroidered abayas,
Dolce & Gabbana has taken that
step in allowing more women to
be themselves, and to do so fash-
ionably in their own right. In fact,
while the collection is catered
toward women who wear hijabs
or abayas, any woman would be
lucky to be able to wear the rich,
long-flowing dresses that exhibit
both classic elegance and style.
While D&G has opened the
gates for more high-fashion
houses to follow in example,
not all people can afford or are
understandably willing to spend
that much on any item of cloth-
ing. So what about everyone
else? It is time that more every-
day ready-to-wear retailers start
embracing these broader fashion
needs. I can go to the mall tomor-
row and find an outfit for any
type of personality, age or fash-
ion sense, so why should Muslim
women not be catered to as well?
Taking true pride and putting
conscious thought into what they
wear and how they wear it, Mus-
lim women — those wearing a
hijab, abaya or none at all — often
find it hard to reconcile dressing
fashionably with dressing mod-
estly. Especially in today’s soci-
ety where “less is more” seems
to be the ongoing trend amongst
millennials around the world.
By no means is the Dolce & Gab-
bana collection perfect; in fact,
there have been many issues with
the marketing of the line in gen-
eral. Debuting the designer hijabs
with non-Muslim, white models
definitely hovers over the line of
cultural and religious appropria-
tion. It also leaves Muslim women
for whom the line was tailored a bit
excluded.
So, no, it’s not perfect, but I guess
in the midst of a society wracked
by Islamophobia and the ignorant
rants of Donald Trump threaten-
ing a ban on Muslims, it’s not only
comforting, but crucial, to see com-
panies and designers embracing
both the hijab and the abaya.
Comforting and
crucial.
How do we talk
about sexism in
hip hop? Most
options suck.